Preparing your association for a recession can be downright intimidating. However, it’s critical to start your preparations early and determine how you can minimize the impact of an economic downturn on your association’s finances. Use these three questions to help you decide what to keep and what to cut from your association budgets.
Our team recently attended ASAE’s Annual Meeting and Exposition where they learned all about how to better manage associations. One of the topics that stuck out was that of applying social work skills to association management. This session focused on emotional intelligence and how it applies to leadership.
Emotional intelligence is your ability to understand other people and their motives as well as your own. Your ability to understand and control your own emotions is tied to your emotional intelligence or quotient. You may be wondering how this ties to running your organization. Working on how you see others’ views, react, and read people are not only skills that make for healthy personal relationships, but professional as well. Learn to have more productive conversations by utilizing the following tips, ideas, and solutions.
Every organization (or at least we hope) has conversations regarding what’s next. What’s next for membership? What will the next conference look like? What can we post on social media next month? These are all important “nexts” but not as important as what is next for leadership. Without succession planning, the other plans may not happen or they may not be what members need. Associations often fail to develop leadership while they still have strong leaders.
Search for the leaders. As a board or committee chair, you know what other members are regularly volunteering and showing interest in the organization. Keep an eye on those members and get a pulse for how involved they would like to become. Having a roster of potential leaders will make the process much easier.
Warm up the new leaders. Find ways for potential or next in line leaders to get a feel for their future role. Whether it is serving on a co-chair of a committee or president-elect, practice makes perfect. This is a time for the current leader to train the volunteer for their role. It allows for questions to be asked before the transition occurs.
Weed out the “bad.” Not to say that someone who is volunteering their time can be bad, but there are most certainly volunteers who are not as passionate or dedicated as they once were. Be able to recognize this when it happens and take action. It is okay to have an honest conversation with the volunteer while recognizing the commitment they have had in the past.
Make it protocol. To make those conversations easier or unnecessary, set term limits. Ensure that your bylaws clearly state how long members should serve on a board or committee. This will allow new talent to continuously flow through the association and eliminate the inevitable burnout.
Succession planning allows for new ideas and new perspectives to be brought to the table. It creates conversations that might have otherwise never been had. You might enjoy your role as a leader, but you can’t do it forever. If you have a passion for the organization, make sure it will have a successful future.
Members join associations to fill a need or desire. These needs and desires are likely to change over time and your association should be open and ready for change. “81% of associations with membership increases in the past five years, and 82% with an increase in overall new members, are significantly more likely – by margins of at least fifteen points – to indicate that their organization has a culture that supports innovation.”(Marketing General Incorporated) The opposite can be said for associations that do not support innovation. These organizations saw a dip in membership numbers. You may be asking, how do I effectively implement innovation within the board and association? Good question.
Start with self-reflection. Within your board, evaluate what has changed and what has remained the same for years. Just because something has been done the same way for years does not always make it the best way for it to be done. How can you improve that for membership? What do members need out of it? Work from there!
If you work with an AMC, ask for their advice! They have seen many different ways of doing things and can be a great resource when it comes to implementing change. They can also provide an outside perspective on how things look, what seems to be working, and what is not.
You may be overwhelmed by the amount of tasks and processes to review. Try walking through the member experience from start to finish.
Review membership models. Are there enough options? Are there too many options? Are the prices fair?
Review benefits. Are members given what they are promised? Do they still want the same benefits? Ask them! A simple survey can answer these questions. This will keep you from wasting time and money on things they may not be interested in while allowing you to focus on things they do want.
From there, review anything else involved with being a member including events, communication, etc. Once you have wrapped up the review process, do not lose momentum. Now is the time to brainstorm and implement change. This is the only way to grow your organization over time. Members will age out or fall off and innovation will allow you to slow this down while growing new demographics. “Associations with increases in one-year and five-year membership numbers are more likely to have higher percentages of Millennials and Generation X members (23% and 31%, respectively). One way these groups are achieving this is through growth in participation with their young professional programs.” (Marketing General Incorporated) Growing these younger generations and allowing them opportunities within the organization is crucial to staying relevant. Without an openness to innovation, your association will stay stagnant or see a decline in membership. Get ahead of this and watch your association prosper.
Preparing for a recession should be something associations are thinking about during their strategic planning each year. This is something that, now, is coming into play more than ever. You might be wondering, how can Impact Association Management help our clients to successfully plan for an economic downturn?
Impact AMC can help!
Facilitate strategic planning and create a strategic plan, which considers and accounts for the possibility of an economic downturn. The organization will be much better off if this is done in advance rather than scrambling at the time.
Assess the historical impact recessions have had on membership, conference attendance, grant and partner funding, other key revenue sources and make recommendations based on this data.
o Should special membership pricing or discounts be in place for renewal?
o Should dues forgiveness be used for unemployed members?
o Are renewals automatic?
o Automate messaging leading up to conferences and renewals – why should they attend the conference or renew their membership? What benefits will they reap or haven’t they used yet?
Confirm their reserve model is prepared for risk.
Adapt content and messaging of member programming to reflect a near-term recession where appropriate.
o Marketing should still be happening! It just needs to be efficiently targeted.
o Reinforce the value of the association.
o Offer more networking and career assistance.
o What is the business case for attending the conference during an economic downturn?
o Is their a collaborative forum for members to proactively engage with one another? If not, now might be the time to roll this out. It’s a low cost/low staff time engagement tool for members. This can be done via Association Management Software (Wild Apricot) and LinkedIn or Facebook groups
Using data, identify which programs meet the members’ needs the most and ensure they’re recession-proof and can sustain future economic trends. These programs should reflect the association’s core purpose. Conversely, identify which programs should be cycled out and retired.
o These might be tough conversations, but they should be happening. Develop a way to assess program value and returns as well as when programs should be cycled out and retired.
Identify how your association can become a source of things your members cannot get anywhere else.
o What is the association’s niche? Is the board of director’s view of this the same as the association’s members?
o Hone into this and use it as a differentiator as to why people should join your association versus another one.
This might seem like a scary thing to deal with and something you only prepare for when the time comes. Being prepared, however, is what will help your association to thrive at a time that might seem unlikely.
